Jesus Wars 2 -- The War of Two Natures

Our small group continues to read Jesus Wars by Philip Jenkins. See my post on the introduction and first chapter here.
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1. After reading about the crazy battles that resulted in what we now call orthodoxy, there seem two possible conclusions: 1) God was behind the scenes making sure the right answers won out or 2) it's all a crap shoot and orthodox Christianity is a sham.

I have argued for #1 for the last 25 years. If we don't have some faith that God was directing the final outcomes, Christian orthodoxy falls apart. We like to think that the Bible is obvious on all these things, but history tells a different story.

Every party in the debates over the Trinity and the nature of Christ was arguing from Scripture. Arius argued from Scripture. Athanasius argued from Scripture. Paul of Samosata argued from Scripture. Cyril argued from Scripture. Apollinarius argued from Scripture. Nestorius argued from Scripture. 

The politics -- indeed the violence -- that forged what we now believe as Christians is depressing. I think I had some sense of holy men gathering to discern what God wanted the church to affirm. Not so. In fact, the winners were more often the least holy and the most politically crafty. It reminds me of something Victor Frankl said about the concentration camps of the Holocaust. The more virtuous you were, the less likely you were to survive. "The best of us did not return." [1]

The century between Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451) primarily argued over the two natures of Christ. I have always felt like the final conclusion made perfect sense -- one person, two natures, fully God, fully human. Yet the players in this debate seem far from holy intellectuals. They seem more like the Gangs of New York.

2. Jenkins reviews the lead up. 

The earliest centuries saw options -- arguing from the books we now call the New Testament, no less -- that were early considered wrong. These were not evil people with twisted mustaches. They were the losers, and history is told by the winners. Again, by faith, we believe that God picked the winners whether they were good people or not.

Some early losers:

• The Ebionites -- Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah but not that he was divine. It is debated whether they represent a form of Jewish Christianity going back to the earliest church.
• Adoptionists -- This one lasted a while. They believed that Jesus became the Son of God at some point (for example, at his baptism). Mark does not give any explicit teaching on Jesus before his baptism.
• Perhaps Matthew and Luke could be used to argue that he was Son of God through the virgin birth, but they say nothing explicit about what he might have been before that. Some early Christians might not have believed in Jesus' pre-existence.
• Some Gnostics had a form of adoptionism. Cerinthus (time of John) thought Jesus was possessed by a divine force at his baptism.
• Paul of Samosata (bishop of Antioch in the 260s) believed the human Jesus was born of Mary and then that the Logos descended on him at his baptism.
• Some might have believed Jesus became Son of God at his resurrection.
• By contrast, Docetists (around at the time of 1 John) believed that Jesus only seemed to be human.
• Sabellius (around 220) believed that God was only one person who kept changing hats. The Father became Jesus became the Spirit. One person.

3. Then we have the 300s. Constantine makes Christianity legal, which means the door is now open for Christians to develop power and use it to stomp on others. I will say, reading this book has made me much more open to those who think Constantine inadvertantly opened the door to the wholesale corruption of Christianity. We seem to do better when people -- by which I mean non-Christians -- are trying to kill us.

Some losers:

• Arius -- "There was a point when the Son did not exist." Arius believed Jesus was pre-existent and that he was like God. It's hard for us to fathom how popular this version of faith was in the 300s -- more popular than the orthodox. And Arius may very well have been more godly than Athanasius. Christianity among the Germanic tribes in the 400s was more Arian than orthodox.
• Apollinarius -- To be frank, most popular Christians today might just as well be Apollinarians or Eutychians. They more or less saw Jesus as having one nature -- a divine one. Apollinarius thought Jesus had a human body and divine soul. Eutychus thought that Jesus' humanity was like a drop in the ocean compared to his divinity.
• If the Council of Ephesus in 449 had stood (the Robber Council), we would all believe that Jesus did not have a human nature -- or at least not enough of one to count.

4. In 380, the emperor Theodosius II picks a winner for Christianity in the Empire. He picks Nicene Christianity. Thus, we are all Nicenes.

The two centers of the conflict for the next 70 years or so are Antioch and Alexandria. Antioch is always defending the humanity of Jesus. Alexandria is always pushing a single nature that is divine. Antioch is the place of biblical scholarship. Alexandria is the place with a history of Platonism.

Alexandria seems to wield the power of sabotage and the power of the mob. Frankly, I kept thinking of MAGA Christians as I read about them. 

Constantinople had become the center of Roman power, so it was a key power with regard to its bishop. These bishops often were chosen from Antioch. Then Alexandria would use its power to trash them. Most of the time, they did this by finding something about the Antiochenes or patriarch of Constantinople that they could call heretical and stir up a mob over. Again, MAGA Christians.

Meanwhile, Rome was trying to consolidate its power but was really like an old man whose hearing aid isn't working. They don't speak Greek so they don't really know entirely what's going on. They're invited to the council but can't really hear very well.

All sorts of forgeries are being created in this era. And of course, on a popular level, people believe whatever they want to believe, which is what their tribe believes.

"People knew the slogans, but did they really understand them? Actually an excellent case can be made that such distinctions were beyond the reach not just of ordinary believers but of many church leaders" (62).

"Cities fell apart in violent conflicts over a single letter: was Christ of the same being with the Father or of like being, homoousios or homoisousios? Was he from two natures or in two?" (63).

5. Nestorius was another target of the Alexandrians. It's not at all clear that he was the heretic he is made out to be.

Christians "did not fully understand the theology they believed" (67). But they knew the groups they were against. "Once something was an ism," it was a target. Once a stereotype was established, it could be used to destroy someone. All you had to do is attach the label to them.

Sound familiar? This is quintissential MAGA Christianity. "Socialist" "Leftist liberal" "woke." No need to have any.thought whatsoever. Once the label is attached, they're toast.

"Whatever he actually preached, Nestorius became the central figure of Nestorianism" (67). "Theological debate became a game of guilt by association."

"Understanding a war of isms helps us trace the course of theological development thorugh these centuries... In each case, advocates were reacting as much to the stereotype of the enemy movement prevailing at the time rather than to any rational analysis of its teachings" (67-68).

[1] Man's Search for Meaning.

5.1 Fully Human, Fully Divine

1. The central tenets of the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian definition are that 1) God is three distinct persons but one substance and 2) Jesus is one person with two natures. Further, Jesus' human nature is not trivial. His temptations were real, meaning that there was a genuine tension between his human desires and his divine will.

These positions represent four centuries of Christian debate and discussion about who Jesus actually was. Along the way, the following perspectives at some point were deemed false teachings:

• Docetism/Gnosticism: Believed that Jesus only seemed to be human but did not truly take on human flesh
• Ebionites: Believed Jesus was a prophet but not divine
• Adoptionism: Belief that Jesus was "adopted" as God's Son either at his baptism or resurrection
• Modalism/Sabellianism: Belief that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all one person changing "modes."
• Arianism: Believed that Jesus was the first and most exalted creation but not of one substance with God the Father
• Apollinarism: Belief that Jesus had a human body but a divine mind
• Nestorianism: presented Jesus' humanness and divinity as so distinct that Jesus almost seemed to be two persons
• Eutychianism: considered Christ's humanity as so insignificant that Jesus might just as well only have one nature (monophysitism)
• Monothelitism: A sense that Jesus only had one will, a divine will

Clearly there was a desire on the part of the early Christians to see Jesus as truly and fully human while also being truly and fully divine.

2. In addition to these dead ends in the deliberations of some four hundred years, we have to take into account the original meanings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are our primary sources and indeed, the true centers of a biblical theology of Jesus. To what extent were the conclusions of the early church in continuity with the perspectives of the biblical authors?

There are many points at which the message of the Bible can be true regardless of historical questions. For example, whether Daniel reflects the voice of a sixth century prophet or an anonymous voice from the second century BC, it presents truth. What that truth is may be slightly different because the context turns out to be different. But the truthfulness of the text arguably is not in question.

By contrast, the historical nature of Jesus is material to the truth of Christianity itself. Christianity does not rise or fall on the question of whether the book of Jonah is a novella of sorts or a historical story. But Christianity as we know it is simply not true if Jesus never really existed. If Bultmann were right and Christianity were only a myth of authentic existence, it would not be Christianity any more in any substantial sense.

For these reasons, the historical Jesus matters. From the standpoint of historic Christianity, it matters whether the human Jesus was the second person of the Trinity incarnate. It is not enough to give these texts a theological interpretation that fits with later Christian orthodoxy. There must be a historical foundation here that supports that orthodoxy.

3. Quick overview of source criticism of the Gospels

• Most scholars have concluded that Mark was the first of the four Gospels.
• Most scholars have concluded that Matthew used Mark as its primary source. Matthew must then have some other source as well, especially for a lot of Jesus' teaching.
• The idea of a source of Jesus' sayings (often called Q) remains common, although this hypothesis has lost a great deal of ground. I continue to think that Papias' description of the Gospel of Matthew sounds more like Q than the Greek Gospel of Matthew we have.
• Luke is thought to have used Mark as a source and then either a) Q as well, the traditional view, b) Matthew and Mark, the Goodacre view, or c) Matthew, Mark, and Q (my hunch).
• The reason why Goodacre has not convinced me is that Luke's versions of many sayings, as well as its distributed packaging of the sayings, seems less edited than Matthew's. 
• John is clearly a Gospel of a different color. Unlike the Synoptics it has no exorcisms, no parables, is filled with signs when Mark says Jesus will give none, doesn't mention the temptation, doesn't say the Last Supper is a Passover meal, proclaims Jesus' identity openly as opposed to keeping it a secret, doesn't talk much about the kingdom of God or the final judgment, emphasizes faith in Jesus himself while the other Gospels focus more on faith in the good news of God's kingdom, etc.
• Clement of Alexandria called John a "spiritual Gospel." It is clearly far more symbolic in its presentation of Jesus than the other Gospels.

4. Jesus' Divine Attributes
I would suggest the following negotiation of orthodoxy with the biblical texts to form a biblical theology of Jesus that is both orthodox and yet exegetically justifiable:

• Jesus "presented" as a real human being. In other words, in his early life he did not present as omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. Mark 13:32 unashamedly indicates that the early Jesus did not know the day of his own return.
• The understanding of Jesus developed over time in the decades after his death. The Gospel of John reflects a more advanced understanding than we find anywhere else in the New Testament. This fact confirms that Jesus "presented" as a true human.
• Yet a kenotic approach is technically unorthodox. Jesus cannot be of one substance with the Father and cease to have any of his divine attributes. Therefore, we must conclude that Jesus had omniscience while on earth but did not use it. He was omnipotent but did not use his power.
• There is much to commend a view that Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit while on earth in order to show us both what true humanity is and what is possible for all humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit. This approach fits with very common NT language that speaks of God doing things through Jesus rather than speaking of Jesus himself doing them.

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel

Turkey Day 8: Cappadocia and Nicaea

Turkey in 10 Days
1. General Remarks
2. What to Bring
3. Day 1: Traveling There
4. Day 2: Troy
5. Day 3: Pergamum, Thyatira, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna 
6. Day 4: Ephesus and Laodicea
7. Day 5: Colossae and Perga
8. Day 6: Galatia: Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra
9. Day 7: Derbe and Tarsus

10. Day 8: Cappadocia and Nicaea
Thursday was mostly a travel day.  Having gone as far east in Turkey as we would go, we would spend most of Thursday on a bee-line toward Istanbul that went straight through the capital of Ankara.  It was also the closest we would come to ground zero of ancient Hittite country (Hattusa, now Boğazkale).  The Hittites were at their peak around the time of Abraham (see Genesis 23).

Cappadocia
Cappadocia is mentioned in 1 Peter 1:1 as one of its destinations, including several other places we had already visited (Asia, Galatia).  But for Christians, probably the most significant aspect of the region is the fact that the Cappadocian fathers were centered here: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa his brother, and Gregory of Nazianzus.

Cappadocian cave houses

Everyone assumes that we get the Trinity from the Bible, but I don't think Christians realize how much of what we believe about Jesus was a matter of serious debate in the 300s.  Both sides claimed to have Scripture on their side and there were a number of decades where the Trinity as we know it wasn't winning.

The Cappadocians went philosophical because biblical debates had reached a stalemate. The Cappadocians were the ones that worked out the "one substance, three persons" that would become part of the Nicene Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. (By engaging philosophy and the Greek liberal arts, they also helped Christianity become a premier religion :-)

After breakfast on Thursday, we made our way to Göreme, which is super-easy to find from Nevshehir.  Just east of town is where Christians carved monasteries and churches out of the relatively soft rock that once upon a time had been formed by lava.  Earlier volcano activity had left "fairy chimneys" all over the place.  This is the general area where Star Wars filmed Tatooine.

Cappadocia

Here, not only in times of persecution but for centuries, Christians had monasteries and churches inside the fairy chimneys.  It's 15 lira to get into the "open air museum."

Cappadocian monastery

The 11th century art in the churches in these "chimneys" was exquisite, especially in the "Dark Church."    This cave church is an extra 8 lira but definitely worth it--the best part of the entire site for me.  For the record, I didn't take this photo:

Dark Church at Cappadocia

We had pretty much finished walking around the main site before the bulk of the tour buses arrived. We didn't go to  the "Buckle Church," about 50 meters down the hill (the ticket to the open air museum gets you in there also).  We heard it was fabulous.

Travel
To get back toward Istanbul, we decided first to take 300 west to Aksaray (about 70 kilometers) in order to get on the larger highway 750.  If you've paid attention to the road numbers, both of these are familiar.  300 goes all the way to Izmir near Ephesus.  750 goes south down to Tarsus.

But our goal was to take 750 north through Ankara, which soon joins up with the superhighway 0-4.  0-4 goes all the way to Istanbul, but our sights were set on Nicaea.  It's about 540 kilometers from Aksaray to the environs of a town called Sakarya.  It's near this city, only about 150 kilometers shy of Istanbul itself, that you finally turn south on 650.  Take that about 50 kilometers until you can turn west onto 150 around Mekece.  That will take you to Iznik, which is modern day Nicaea.

Nicaea
After that much travel, it's nice to settle into a hotel.  There is a string of hotels along Lake Iznik.  You can get to the lake easily simply by following the ruins of the medieval city wall, which you will hit eventually if you just keep driving through town from any direction.  650 itself actually goes straight to the lake.

Lake Iznik at Nicaea

Ross was now an expert at negotiating hotel rates, and we could have had our pick of a half dozen.  He got one of the best down to 120 lira a room.  Its proprietor was also a pro--a worthy adversary.

A central road led from the lake to the main road through Iznik, a road that runs roughly parallel to the lake shore.  We decided to walk there for a change.  We found the mosque created out of the church that housed the seventh ecumenical council of 787, where Christians decided it was okay to use icons, images and art of saints.

Nicaean church now mosque

It doesn't seem like we know exactly where the Council of Nicaea was originally held, where the Trinity was first decided (325).  But I wouldn't be surprised if a later church was built on a significant earlier site.

Some more lovely baklava and we walked back to our hotel. In the morning we would return to Istanbul.